Equal sacrifice and fair burden-sharing in a public goods economy

Applying a willingness-to-pay approach known from contingent valuation in environmental economics, we develop an ordinally based measure for the size of individual sacrifice that is connected with an agent’s contribution to a public good. We construct a selection mechanism that picks the unique efficient solution among all allocations that have an equal sacrifice as defined in this way. We show that the solution thus obtained corresponds to Moulin’s egalitarian equivalent allocation, conforms to both the ability-to-pay and the benefit principles, and has much in common with the Lindahl equilibrium.      

十二大举措改善实体经济融资缺口

四大投融资政策解读 第一,在需求侧围绕有效投资,扩大有效投资.有效投资兼顾短期和长期,既拉动短期需求,同时要看到长期对经济有效的拉动作用.最重要的着力点是要确保到2020年全面建成小康社会."十三五"规划期间,中国平均每年的经济增长速度约为6.5%,全面建成小康社会是中国"五个全面"中领头的第一个,这也是中共中央对全国人民的庄严承诺.为保持到2020年全面建成小康社会,虽然目前消费已经成为拉动经济的主动力,但必要的投资对稳增长非常重要.初步预测,如果到2020年每年经济增长保持在6.5%,投资约增长8%,就可以保障全面建成小康社会的主要目标.     

Impure public goods,matching grant rates and income redistribution in a federation with decentralized leadership and imperfect labor mobility

We examine the decentralized provision of an impure public good by regional governments in a federation similar in certain respects to both the European Union and the United States. The central authority redistributes income and provides matching grants on a per rate basis after it observes the regions’ contributions to the impure public good. Imperfectly mobile workers react to regional and central governments’ policies by establishing residence in their most preferred region. We show that the allocations of the impure public good and the population are generally efficient in a federation with decentralized leadership.     

The political economy of pricing and capacity decisions for congestible local public goods in a federal state

This paper studies the political economy of pricing and investment for excludable and congestible public goods in a federal state. Although the model applies to many local congestible public facilities (such as libraries, museums and public swimming facilities), our main motivation is the problem of providing and pricing road infrastructure in federal states. The two-region model we develop allows for spill-overs between regions, it takes into account congestion, and it captures demand heterogeneity both between and within regions. Regional decisions are taken by majority voting; federal decisions are taken by a minimum winning coalition in a legislature of regionally elected representatives. We have the following results. First, when users form the majority in at least one region, decentralized decision making performs certainly better than centralized decision making if spill-overs are not too large. Centralized decisions may yield higher welfare than decentralization only if users have a large majority and the infrastructure in a given region is intensively used by both local and outside users. Second, if non-users form a majority in both regions, centralized decision making and decentralized decision making yield the same socially undesirable outcome, with prices that are much too high. Third, the performance of decentralized supply is strongly enhanced by local self-financing rules; this prevents potential exploitation of users within regions.     

The political economy of SME financing and Japan's regional bank problems

Japan's regional bank problems are accumulating non-performing loans, lack of diversification, and the absence of effective competition. We argue that the problems should be addressed in conjunction with the financing of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the political interests of the central and regional governments. The political interests may necessitate funding suboptimal investment projects of regional SMEs or keeping non-performing SMEs alive. In particular, loan repayment guarantees reduce the banks' incentives to screen loan applications, increase the chances that poorer quality projects get funded, and harm competition by deterring entry of other banks. We also offer some policy implications.     

正确引导民间融资，推动区域经济健康发展

随着国家宏观经济政策和人民银行货币政策的调整,区域金融机构用于支持当地经济发展的资金明显减少。一方面,区域经济突飞猛进,原有企业和新建项目需要大量资金;另一方面,金融机构贷款业务萎缩,支援经济发展的投入杯水车薪,自身经营效益日趋下降。以衡水市故城县为例,该县2007年新增投资亿元以上项目5个,5000万元以上的项目10个,1000万元以上的项目50个。     

The timing of financing decisions: An examination of the correlation in financing waves

Why do corporate financing events occur in waves? We challenge recent evidence of the importance of valuation cycles in driving financing waves by documenting that the aggregate pattern of stock repurchases mirrors that of equity issuance and mergers, despite repurchases involving an opposite transaction. We then show that trends in financing decisions result from differing responses to the same economic stimulus: growth in GDP. Specifically, economic expansion reduces the cost of equity relative to the cost of debt, inducing firms to issue equity, and increases cash flow and also causes varying degrees of uncertainty, increasing stock repurchases. We document similar trends and provide similar motivation for merger waves.     

The world economy and the German economy in the spring of 1992

The world economy and the German economy in the spring of 1992     

Banks and markets in a monetary economy

Modern financial sectors consist of banks, asset markets and a central bank. This paper builds a model where these institutions provide different financial services, and their interaction supports efficient allocations. When one institution is missing equilibria are, by construction, inefficient. The paper analyzes how interest rates and asset prices depend on the structure of the financial sector and characterizes the central bank policy that supports efficient allocations. The analysis relies on the difference between liquidity and real shocks, and relates the notion of liquidity used in this paper to the one adopted in other studies.     

Public financing of the arts in England

The paper describes the method, amount and composition of public financing of the arts and heritage services in England during the 1990s. This offers the background to a discussion of how far the rationale for government financing for such services can rely on arguments derived from welfare economics. The presence of ‘market failure’ has been widely accepted by successive governments and their advisers, but attempts to remove it have encountered the familiar problems of ensuring allocative and technical efficiency when production subsidies are the main policy instrument. Special attention is devoted to the policy dilemmas that are likely to arise in the years ahead in the performing arts, heritage and broadcasting.     

Towards explaining activity-based costing failure: accounting and control in a decentralized organization

Many of the activity-based costing (ABC) systems introduced in recent years are said to fail (e.g. Cooperet al., 1992; Argyris and Kaplan, 1994; Shields, 1995; Roberts and Silvester, 1996). The use of ABC for surveillance by the group management, with no consequent actions, leads us to propose that claims on ABC failure result, in part, from assessing the use and value of ABCs from the decision-making perspective. The decision-making perspective may be insufficient for capturing the multitude of uses to which ABCs are put in practise. As this study shows, in the context of strategic decision-making the success of ABC cannot depend on whether its results require any actions or decisions to be taken, but on its ability to make a correct diagnosis of the situation. Consequently, some of the so-called ABC failures may not be failures. They may merely reflect a limited appreciation of the uses of accounting and control systems in practise. Nevertheless, failures and resistance are real in a number of organizations. This study explored the origins of resistance to ABC in a case setting, looking at diverse interests of organizational stakeholders, and the role of existing control and information systems in ABC implementation. We show that the resistance may have several sources; some related to the cost and benefits of ABC, some associated with organizational power and politics, and some pertinent to organization culture. The practical implication of this study hinged on the notion that although the resistance to ABC may come from various sources, these sources appear fundamentally structural and are unlikely to be dealt with by employing implementation-based strategies.     

Revisiting the consumption-real exchange rate anomaly in a model with non-traded goods

This paper shows that the assumption used in many two-country business cycle models that all non-traded goods are nondurable consumption goods magnifies the severity of the consumption-real exchange rate anomaly, which is the discrepancy between the high correlation between relative consumption and the real exchange rate predicted by most models and the low correlation observed empirically. This assumption hampers the ability to generate wealth effects necessary for the economies to deviate away from full risk-sharing. Using an alternative setup in which non-traded goods can also be investment goods improves the ability of the model to generate wealth effects, and therefore to overcome the anomaly.     

The impact and the spillover effect of a sovereign rating announcement on the euro area CDS market

This paper analyzes the impact and the spillover effect of a sovereign rating announcement on the euro area CDS market. Through the event study technique, we demonstrate that downgrades and upgrades considerably affect financial markets. The relevance of the impact is due to the introduction of “new” information after a rating change announcement (information discovery effect) and to the role of rating in the current financial regulation (certification effect). Conversely, the CDS market does not seem to react significantly to rating warning (outlook and review) announcements. Furthermore, we find evidence of a spillover effect only after a downgrade announcement. Our results show that the size of the spillover effect is influenced by economic and financial conditions of analyzed countries and that international bank flows between EMU Members represent an important transmission channel of the spillover effect.     

上市公司财务参数与其股价波动性关系探究

本文探究了上市公司年度股价波动性与其上一年公开财务指标的相关关系。公开财务指标主要包括六项,从不同维度反映了公司规模、资本结构、偿债能力、盈利状况、管理状况和股东情况。通过分析结果发现,若干财务指标与上市公司的股价波动性都有显著的相关关系,大部分符合预期及常识。有一些财务指标与上市公司的股价波动性长时期内表现出稳定、显著的关系。文中尝试探讨了造成这种相关性的因素。     

Limits to the economy of knowledge and knowledge of the economy

In this essay, we explore the view that the growth of knowledge is a complex evolutionary process. We pay particular attention to the division of knowing in a knowledge economy, to the restless nature of knowledge and to the principle of variation and selection that makes the growth of knowledge an evolutionary phenomenon. The foundations for this discussion are located in Adam Smith's suggestion that the most fundamental aspect of the division of labour is the division of knowledge, and the consequential existence of roundabout and combinatorial ways of producing knowledge. This notion of roundaboutness also connects our discussion with the writings of the Austrian school of economists. It is this school of thought that has come closest to understanding the open-ended and evolutionary nature of knowledge based economic activity. The theory of complex adaptive systems, when applied to the economic and social domain, has enabled us to confront the distinction between knowledge and the institution of social understanding. We map the difference between knowledge, which is private, and understanding, which is social. If knowledge is a characteristic of individuals, understanding then becomes an emergent phenomenon arising from the interaction between individuals in specific contexts. Understanding has boundaries it has components that possess great heterogeneity and is sustained by the connections of information flow. It is a socially distributed process whose growth is dependent on a systemic context, on the way a given set of individuals interact to share information and thus to further develop their idiosyncratic knowledge. Recognising that understanding is necessarily distributed leads to the insight that economic activity, which is necessarily social, depends on shared understandings, that is to say, correlated knowledge. This provides a clue as to the unpredictability and unevenness of knowledge accumulation, and of course the unpredictability of capitalism as a knowledge driven system.     

投资者的选择与基金溢出效应研究

本文着重研究基金家族中明星基金对家族内部基金的溢出效应,即明星基金对基金资金流入增长率的影响。对中国证券市场54家基金家族管理的281只开放式偏股型基金的面板分析发现,拥有明星基金能够显著提高基金家族的新基金流入的增长比例,但拥有垃圾基金并不能显著地减少;明星基金比非明星基金能给自身吸引来更多的新资金,明星基金家族的非明星基金与非明星家族的基金相比没能被笼罩在这样的优质光环下。     

The cost of capital and optimal financing policy in a dynamic setting

This paper revisits the Modigliani–Miller propositions on the optimal financing policy and cost of capital in a dynamic setting. In an environment without taxes and bankruptcy costs, the results are generally consistent with the Modigliani–Miller Propositions 1 and 2. However, the first proposition should be presented and interpreted more carefully, as given firm characteristics, there is only one optimal capital structure. Thus, a firm’s capital structure is relevant. A relaxation of assumptions about either taxes or bankruptcy costs leads to conclusions that are generally different from those in Modigliani and Miller (1958). The model predicts that leverage and sales-to-capital ratios decrease but firm size and capital stock increase with the subjective discount factor of the firm’s manager if there are taxes and bankruptcy costs. The empirical analysis supports these predictions.     

Pollution Externalities in a Model of Endogenous Fertility and Growth

An endogenous growth model with human capital formation, pollution caused by production of consumption goods, and endogenous fertility decisions made by altruistic agents with infinite horizons is presented. Consequences for optimal policy of modelling fertility as an explicit decision variable are examined. Because ordinary lump-sum transfers to individuals are no longer neutral, either revenue from a pollution tax must be redistributed to dynasties (working as an implicit tax on child births), or lump-sum transfers must be supplemented with an explicit fertility tax. Alternatively, the government can avoid distortions of the fertility decisions by maintaining an appropriate public debt. When abatement is highly productive, it can be optimal to subsidize fertility in order to increase total production.     

金钥匙理财中心与农业银行个人理财服务——中国农业银行浙江省宁波分行个人理财工作室调研报告

国有商业银行改革正在循序渐进地推开。农业银行的股份制改革也已提上议事日程。农业银行的改革从形式上是实行股份制 ,从实质上是实现商业化。按照商业化的要求去运作 ,去经营 ,观念要创新、体制要突破、产品要优异 !这就需要一批具有现代银行经营理念 ,掌握现代银行运作技术 ,富有改革创新才能的银行经营管理人才。一流的人才 ,需要一流的培训。为农业银行培训一流的人才 ,是农业银行培训学院的神圣使命。带着这一崇高使命 ,我们武汉培训学院部分教师于二○○五年元月份对广东、浙江宁波等分行进行了深入调研 ,为农业银行总行二○○五年的员工培训做好了充分准备。在调研活动中 ,他们结合自己的学习心得和专业理论 ,并且联系农业银行的实际 ,写出了一批具有较高理论素养和实践意义的文章 ,我们在这里选发一部分 ,以飨读者。     

Tourism and economic development in a cash-in-advance economy

This paper examines the impact of tourism on welfare in a cash-in-advance economy. As a result of the expansion in tourism, the price of the non-traded good increases. This gives rise to a terms-of-trade improvement. However, the cash-in-advance constraint causes a distortion in consumption. For tourism demand, where the gain from the terms-of-trade improvement dominates (does not dominate) the loss from the consumption distortion, tourism is welfare-improving (welfare-reducing). A similar condition for welfare improvement (deterioration) holds for a model of capital inflow and endogenised tourism.